Flannery O’Connor and the Law

Abstract

Celebrated Southern fiction author Flannery O'Connor treats her readers to not only a "Christ-haunted" South, but also a "law-haunted" one. Her short stories present a fictional, yet realistic world wherein characters are tacitly preoccupied with legal conflicts, and who engage in quasi-legal storytelling and legalistic modes of speaking and thinking. Ultimately, the futility of O'Connor's characters' insistence on their individual rights and hyper-technical legal formalities,  rather than community, reveal to the reader the need for law to be tempered with humility and empathy. Along the way, O'Connor brings the reader full circle and shows us that even legal formalism may serve as an occasion for grace.

Keywords: Flannery O’Connor, Law and Literature, Narratology, Law and Religion, Law and Humanities, Law and Narrative, Law and Storytelling, Law and Society, Law and Philosophy, Catholic legal studies, Natural law, Jurisprudence